Hulk-lite
I was late happening upon this one, but I'm running it anyway.
Back on April 5th, Zap2it.com ran a short peice concerning the apparent greenlighting of a sequel to Marvel's much-misunderstood "Hulk" movie.
Surprise surprise, the producers (Gale Ann Hurd and Avi Arad) are lightning-quick to point out that any sequel will be gently forced in a direction FAR away from Ang Lee's surrealist-impressionist dreamscape in the first film. Arad goes on to call the approach, literally, "Hulk-Lite."
Long-time readers of this blog (or new readers who've checked the archives, trust me this one is there) will recall that I was predicting back when "Hulk" was faring poorly at the boxoffice that the film will become an example which studio moneymen will cite as reason to weed rampant creativity out of mainstream action product.
Here's the link to Zap2it's article:
http://www.zap2it.com/movies/news/story/0,1259,---21110,00.html
Ahem. As Will Smith faux-deapans in the comically awful "I, Robot" trailers: Somehow, 'I told you so' doesn't QUITE cut it.
In my opinion, the (literal) money-quote from Arad here is as follows: "He won't be this tortured person, it will pick up at the end of the first movie," Arad says. "He's come to terms with his life and who he is and we can let him be the Hulk hero now."
Okay, producer-to-english translation: "We didn't turn as big a profit as we'd set out to, so next time around we're on creative autopilot and will serve America the by-the-numbers empty actioner they've demanded of us." That's whats going on here, and don't let anyone try and tell you it's anything more or less. The mass audience has refused it's steak and will now be served the Big Mac they demanded. Let's hear it for the system. Ick.
NOW, before the decent-sized portion of the Geekdom which also disliked the movie climbs down my throat on this one, settle down fellas. If you're thinking the suits' call on this one means that they'll be going "back to the roots" of the character and "fixing" the detail's Lee's first installment played around with, well, I'll just say you're optimism seems founded on a distinct lack of logic and evidence.
The parts of Arad's quote that should have all geeks fair and true quaking in their boots are his assertion that Banner/Hulk "won't be this tortured person" and will "come to terms with who he is." Um.. no. It's to be understood, of course, that Arad (who's overwhelmingly positive contributions to comics-on-film should not be overshadowed by this) is speaking to the mainstream press and not the fandom here but, seriously, this is Marvel Universe 101 here: If Banner isn't "tortured," there is NO HULK! The character is all about personality-split taken to a physical extreme, so if he "comes to terms with who he is" then he CEASES TO ALSO BE THE HULK, he's just "Bruce Banner, socially well-adjusted and terminally-uninteresting scientist."
Yeah, this is definately one of those times I'd have much prefered to be wrong.
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